1947 - The year of partition where history evidenced communal riots killing million of people also saw some incidents of human love beyond any distinction of religion and caste. Here is the story of a Sikh man Boota Singh and Muslim girl Zainab. The story is also mentioned in famous book ’ Freedom at Midnight’ in detail.
http://www.sajjanlahore.org/corners/zim/lastman/part1/forgottonstory.htm
Long, long ago, a friend asked me: “Who was this Boota Singh?” I said in reply that Boota Singh was a common enough Sikh name, and that he would have to be a little more specific.
Another friend, sitting by my side at the time, said that he knew which Boota Singh my other friend was curious about. "Actually, I think Ishrat Rahmani wrote a book on him. It was published by Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons." So I asked my curious friend to go to the publishers and find out. And that was the end of the matter as far as I was concerned, until I read Som Anand's *Baten Lahore Ki *, about which I wrote last week and promised you that more would follow. Now, Anand wrote his book in 1976. His account of Boota Singh runs something like this:
It was about twenty years ago that he (Som Anand) used to get the *Imroze * by mail. One day he read a story headlined: “Jamil Ahmad commits suicide in Lyallpur (Faisalabad) by throwing himself before a railway train.” The newspaper had given it a four or five-column spread. The report added that he had also put his four or five year old daughter on the rails but somehow or the other she escaped certain death.
In a pocket of the deceased, a note was found in which he had requested those who found his body should bury him in Zainab’s village. The newspaper account gave but a vague hint that it was a dejected lover’s decision to end his life. The story was picked up by the rest of the Press in South Asia, particularly in the Pakistani part of the Punjab. More details came to surface and even editorials were written. This went on for weeks. Indeed, the tragedy inspired some novels and even a movie was planned.
Suicide after failure in love is nothing new in Punjab . The folklore of the province is full of such tales. Poets have also sublimated unrequited love. But all this is old hat. Such stories move us but we don’t really believe in them. In our industrial age, this kind of love has become more fable than fact.
However, Jamil Ahmad’s death revived the old poignancy of romances, like Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban, Sassi Punnu, et al. The most startling aspect of Jamil’s story was that he was a Sikh who went to Pakistan looking for his wife (it would be more appropriate to call her his beloved). Ostensibly, he had his will of a hapless girl but then he made nonsense of the morality of those who evaluate all human travail and tribulation in religious terms.
The Jamil Ahmad story began in the days of communal riots, before and in the aftermath, of partition. Boota Singh owned a considerable acreage of farmland in east Punjab in a village (probably) in Jullunder district. He was fairly prosperous and hadn’t a worry in the world. He had gone past forty but had not married. He had probably decided to lead a life of celibacy.
And then came communal carnage, one tragic aspect of which was that whenever one religious community attacked people belonging to another, its women were abducted, sometimes even sold. Such (Muslim) women were also brought to Boota Singh’s village. One day, some men took a 17-18 years old girl, Zainab by name, to Boota Singh. She was darkish and nothing much to look at. He decided to keep the unfortunate girl after probably paying a price for her. As is the custom with the Jats of the Punjab, he put a shawl over her head, which meant that she had informally become his wife.
Boota Singh was a family man now. A girl was born, followed by another three or four years later. With the passage of time, Boota Singh’s love for Zainab became more and more passionate. The girl was obviously unhappy at having lost her family but Boota’s love made her forget many things. However, Boota Singh’s brothers were not happy at this state of affairs because they had their eyes on his land. Since Boota now had children of his own, they could not inherit his property.
Work was going apace on both sides of the border for the recovery of abducted women under an agreement between India and Pakistan. The Pakistani recovery team was informed by someone that one such woman lived in Boota Singh’s village. Before he could do anything, a jeep was at his door and it was time for Zainab to leave for Pakistan to be reunited with her family. And Boota Singh couldn’t do a thing about it. She decided to take the younger girl with her, leaving the older one with the father. Before leaving, Zainab looked at Boota Singh and said, “Don’t worry I’ll be back soon.”
Boota Singh was now left with a four or five-year old daughter while Zainab was taken to a village in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), where one of her uncles and sisters lived. He was a prosperous landlord even before partition, and therefore, was allotted a lot of farmland in the new village where he settled in Pakistan . Boota Singh used to receive occasional letters from Lyallpur and they were his only link with life. Time went by until one day Zainab wrote to him that plans were afoot to marry her off and if he wanted to prevent it, now was the time.
Zainab had inherited a lot of land from her father, but she lived with her uncle who wanted to marry her to one of his sons to grab her land. The son was not willing. He wanted a beautiful bride and people regarded Zainab, a mother of two, as tainted. While this was going on, someone wrote to Boota Sigh to go to Lyallpur before it was too late. Singh sold off his property and went to Delhi with his elder daughter. The first thing he did in Delhi was to go to a mosque to be converted to Islam. The imam named him Jamil Ahmad. Then he went to the Pakistan High Commission and applied for nationality of the new country. His plea was sent to Karachi but after a long wait, he was told that what he wanted was not possible for him to get.
Eventually, he came to Pakistan on a visa and went straight to Lyallpur . Arrested by the police for having overstayed, he was taken to court where he told the magistrate his life’s story. The latter summoned Zainab and asked her whether she wanted to go with Boota Singh (Jamil Ahmad). To his amazement, Zainab told the Court that she did not want to have anything with Jamil. This was the end of the world, so far he was concerned, and he decided to take his own life.
His suicide caused a sensation in Pakistan , and according to Som Anand, thousands of people visited the Mayo Hospital in Lahore to have a look at his mutilated remains. Some young people were even seen crying. When his body was taken to Zainab’s village where he wanted to be buried, as requested in his last will and testament recovered from one of his pockets, the people there said that they would not allow it because it would scandalize Zainab’s *biradari *. The police brought his body to Lahore , where he was eventually buried.
What happened to Zainab? How did she take it? Our clever journalist from Lahore found it out. He went to her village and lived there for some time and won her confidence soon enough. One day he asked her casually: “Well, he is dead. Why should that bother you? You have a young husband and plenty of land. What more do you want?”
“What you say is true but no-one can love me the way he (Boota Singh ) did. At night when I could not sleep because of the heat, he would fan me for hours. This husband I have now, beats me up and my daughter and says she is not good looking because she has been living with a Sikh.” Well, that’s how the Boota Singh story ended.
2 number aashiq.. but again we can’t determine the psyche of people who lived during those difficult times and faced so much trauma.
